GOOD READING MARCH 2016 33
place, and the fir m allegiances that were
strategically cultivated in the past often have to
be rapidly renegotiated as a stream of usur pers
take – and then lose – the role of Imperator.
There are many parallels between the empire
Grant has created and that of Rome. But Grant’s
empire, despite its similar ities with its real-life
Roman counterpart, is different. Why did he
decide to wr ite histor ical fiction rather than just
a non-fiction account of the tur moil in Rome
in late antiquity – or tell his story and just set it
in Rome?
‘Secret Histories is technically histor ical
fantasy, because it’s set in a created world,
although it has similar ities to a real world. The
main reason I did that is because you can make
it up. I really dislike historical fiction where,
as with the writer Conn Iggulden, enor mous
liberties are taken with what actually happened.
If you want to write histor ical fiction
I think you need to be as faithful as
possible to the known sources. While
that could also be fun, I just had an idea
for this particular type of ancient world
that I wanted to develop.’
A huge emphasis is
currently being placed
in educational circles on
STEM subjects – science,
technology, engineer ing
and maths – perhaps
to the detriment of
subjects such as history.
This seems to be a grave error, and I ask Grant
if he thinks there are any lessons from history
that could be applied to current political and
social problems – or are all histor ical events so
different from each other that it’s difficult to
extract useful lessons?
‘The real value of studying the past, apart
from the fact that it’s a lot of fun, is that it
teaches us that the world can change. Without
a sense of history we live in an eternal present
and people may think that the world is the
way it is because it has to be that way. Nothing
could be further from the truth. But as Mark
Twain said, history does not repeat itself but it
does rhyme. There are a lot of false lessons you
can learn from history. So the Second Iraq War
was often justified as avoiding the mistakes of
1930s appeasement. That tur ns out to have been
a false lesson. And so now the US is declining
to mount a land invasion of Syria; this time they
have perhaps lear ned the correct lesson.’
That’s an instance of politicians learning
from their own history. But I wonder how
successful we are at learning vicar iously – from
the mistakes of other people – so that we don’t
have to exper ience the suffer ing that results
from learning from our own blunders.
‘It’s probably more the case that you can
use history to explode bad theories. For
example, the notion that immigration causes
unemployment. George Megalogenis recently
wrote in Australia’s Second Chance about the
relationship between Australia’s prosperity
and its migration. There’s a direct relationship;
you can actually plot the long-ter m
downturns in the Australian economy
going back to the 19th century
against reductions in the level of
immigration.’
I ask Grant if he knows of any
politicians who employ
histor ians to advise them.
‘A lot of politicians
themselves are very
interested in history.
Winston Churchill, for
example, is a pretty good
instance of that. Gough
Whitlam certainly was. John Howard had an
interest in a certain use of history. And I suspect
Malcolm Turnbull is interested in history. I don’t
think Tony Abbott was very interested in it.
‘But I think their staffers are much more
interested in political science – how you pick up
the swinging votes.’
It’s a dispiriting bellwether of the quality of
our politicians that political science – the art
of gaining power – could be considered more
important than learning how to wield that
power well.
Secret Histories by Grant Hansen is available
from Amazon, e-book rrp $5.41.
UP CLOSE 1
‘There are a lot of
false lessons you
can learn from
history.’